I am travelling from Australia to Japan on Friday and I need to take rennet and starter cultures in my check in luggage. I wont be taking much, approx under 100ml of liquid non animal rennet and 20g each of freeze dried cultures. I will also be taking the batch information sheets for each product.

Do you think Japanese customs will let me bring them in. I have emailed them and they only said no animal products are allowed.

Thanks S SIt seemed to indicate more animal meat products were not allowed in. Hopefully I dont have to dump it all. I might contact the US cheese suppliers to see if they have any restrictions with sending ingredients to Japan.

From my experience Japanese customs are not as strict as Australian so it should be fine, as long as they are in unopened packets/containers. More often than not though they won't even check your stuff. I think Australia is one of the last places (plus NZ) that has strict quarantine - everywhere else has probably got everything else by now... Enjoy your trip, hopefully without any cavity searches!

I just had 3 starters and 50ml liquid non animal rennet in separate labelled sterile sample containers in zip locked bags. I declared them and the man just thought I was funny - who would want to make cheese! He had a laugh then said on your way funny red haired cheese making lady!!

Back in Oz land today and I realised I didn't take any photos of the cheese I made.

We searched the supermarkets in Kyoto for unhomogenised milk with no luck. We were able to buy milk that was pasteurised at 63C, most was ultrapasteurised at 130C.

I made haloumi (almost was a disaster but it came good in the end) whey ricotta, cream cheese and yoghurt. All the cheese came out really white even though it was full cream, 3.6% cows milk.

I am on the hunt for fresh raw milk now. They have it in the north near Hokkaido. If anyone knows anymore about fresh milk in Japan let me know. There is also meant to be a goat dairy west of Sendai... i would love to go over there and teach the expats.